Beijing Makes Friends and Riches in Africa

[chlamor]

Beijing makes friends and riches in Africa

Simon Tisdall
Friday April 22, 2005
The Guardian

China's headlong scramble for Africa will gather high-level impetus today when President Hu Jintao joins dozens of African and Asian leaders at a celebratory summit in Indonesia.
The meeting marks the 50th anniversary of the Bandung conference - the moment when developing countries began to join forces. It foreshadowed the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement six years later.

<snip>

In Bandung, Zhou Enlai represented communist China alongside national founding fathers such as India's Nehru and Egypt's Nasser. But Mr Hu will not be advocating revolutionary solidarity in the teeth of western colonialist oppression. His post-imperial message to Africa is all business: economic self-interest and development, trade pacts, investment and bilateral aid.

<snip>

Major trading relationships are developing with South Africa and Egypt, while Chinese-financed infrastructure, telecoms and tourism projects are proliferating from Sierra Leone and Rwanda to Madagascar and Lesotho.

In all, China-Africa trade has doubled to more than $20bn since 2000, and is projected to double again by 2009. At that rate, China will soon surpass the US, whose trade with Africa in 2004 was valued at $30bn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1465999,00.html

[orwell]

1. Das Boot

So while the US bludgeons its way across the world stage, leaving car bombs and prison scandals in its wake, China puts another boot squarely up the ass of Uncle Sam, expanding their sphere of influence through trade and third world development.

We try and stymie Chnina's access to ME oil. They develop oil and trade resources in Africa. We are saddled with an exploding military infrastructure, they are "saddled" with multilateral trade agreements. One is destructive, one is productive.

Which do you think is the better "strategery?"

[chlamor]

2. And we are all saddled

with the pollution and turmoil from the great globalizers, be they of a militaristic persuasion or mercantile.

A small boy in The Congo cries-A young girl in Sudan dies

[orwell]

4. Win - Win

I have no problem with economic empowerment. If properly implemented it is win/win.

The crisis in the third world is due to structural impediments to capital formation by the poor, not mercantile engagement per se.

The problem with modern crony capitalism is that it only rewards capital AND directs capital formation to the very top of the economic ladder.

The elimination of poverty requires capital to flow in an equitable fashion to all the labor participants. If you labor, you should build capital. It is easier to dig the ground with a plow than your bare hands. The problem is that only a few own the plow. Those that don't own a plow are relegated to indentured servitude to those that do through a rigged system of indebtedness to the asset-holding class.

In the end it is ownership of your labor AND capital that makes for a better life. It is also true that the environment is best served when all participants can accumulate capital. You don't care about ecology when you are starving.

[chlamor]

5. Define Economy

what you described were financial arrangements, a very narrow and ultimately dangerous and destructive view of what an economy is.

Define economy as you know it.

[orwell]

6. Manage the House

Economy is the allocation/management of assets, initially throughout a household, or in a larger sense, a society. The term refers, in essence, to the "management of the house."

Assets can be both labor, or accumulated labor (capital). Capital, through technology, has the benefit of magnifying labor. For instance, a plow is more efficient than bare hands. But you need either access or ownership of the plow to realize the magnification in your labor that it represents.

All animals are capable of labor (work). But it is the application of work magnified by technology that returns wealth greater than that of the base human effort. Realize that I do not define technology solely as machine-based, it can be represented by a superior application of knowledge as well. If I find a crop through my observation that grows twice as fast with the same yield as the crop you plant, my labor will be twice as efficient.

Technology is a form of capital. Therefore, the advantage that the productive asset holding class has over the poor laborer is the magnification of effort and thus return on effort that capital (technology) applies.

In other words, the rich get richer not through greater application of labor. Frequently the contrary is true. They accrue greater return on labor due to the magnification of effort achieved through technology.

This is the dirty little secret of crony capitalism. Horatio Alger didn't necessarily work harder than the poor share cropper, he received magnified benefit from his work due to either the application of technology or the outright theft of others' labor through his undeserved commandeering of the capital formation through crony capitalism (favoritism.) Our current president is a good example.

To put it simply, it is not hard work that necessarily separates "the rich" from "the poor", but rather the claim over capital assets, both physical and financial. This is what must be addressed to solve the problem of the growing divide between rich and poor globally.

This goes part and parcel with environmentalism. Environmental degradation can only exist because of the hidden subsidies involved in pollution. Economists call this "externality." Because people are allowed a "free ride" on pollution, the true costs are not implicit in their purchasing decisions. Also, the poorer a household/society is the less free resources (capital) they have to apply to these hidden costs.

For example, many people will not pay extra for organic produce because they are already cash strapped at current prices to put food on the table, even though they receive a hidden subsidy for topsoil depletion by buying the fertilizer/pesticide laden conventional product. If they had greater "free" resources, the decision would not be so clear. Most would opt for the superior taste and long term viability of organic over the bland, topsoil depleting, environmentally destructive alternative.

In the end, a greater realization/retention of capital in the third world, especially in the lowest economic classes, will be the most revolutionary blow against the crony elite capitalists that are currently running/ruining the planet.

[chlamor]

7. Hurrah

I think you are absolutely the first human I have encountered who could accurately define economics-from the Greek oikonomikas (sp?)- stewardship of the household. I live in Ivy League territory and debate the Ivory Tower academics all the time and have a hard time trying to persuade them that the world is more than financial manipulation. Of course they know this but are too entrenched in Milton Friedmans hollow neo-liberal nonsense.

I nominate you as the next head of the World Bank. Of course you would be assassinated.

Economics as if People Mattered-E.F. Schumacher
Home Economics-Wendell Barry

:toast:

ECO-ology
ECO-nomy
One and the same in a sane world that understands the Source

[orwell]

8. Thanks

I actually first saw it defined in this manner in Secrets of the Temple by William Greider. I was somewhat surprised when he referred to it this way so I looked it up and voila.

I too am sick of the canonization of Friedman and the whole Chicago School. It is interesting to note that much of the current Neocon cadre also came from this Chitown hotbed of elite speak, but from the Straussian political wing.

Behind it all is the unseen arm of the elite global capitalists like Rockefeller and Rothschild who sit around and laugh at how they have conned so many of the masses to vote against their own interests to keep the sick crony capital ball rolling.

They keep mentioning "freedom", "free market", "big government", "capitalist", and the rest of the buzzwords while simultaneously rigging the system, especially "big government" to benefit themselves and the rest of the "Davos boys."

As far as the World Bank, I wish it, the Fed, most of the world's central banks, the IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements were all abolished.

BTW here is an interesting website I found the other day:

http://www.globaljusticemovement.net

While I don't agree with everything here, at least they are trying to address the real problems with some real solutions, some quite innovative. We need far more of this and far less of Uncle Miltie and his ilk.

Thanks for the book references. I have heard of the Schumacher book but not Barry's. I guess I have some library work to do.

This micro beer's for you.

:toast:

[hector459]

9. I toast you posters for one of the most civil and informative posts on DU

:toast:

Thanks!

[Igel]

3. China at least lacks the double-standards the US has.

Now the US doesn't care that a government's a dictatorship, now it does; now it rewards strong-arming the population, now it condemns and sanctions it.

France and China have no such scruples. China says it can legally and properly invade Taiwan; France says, Fine ... now, about that contract?

And China has the cash to buy loyalty. As the US once did.